I became aware of August Underground about 5 years ago. Being a slasher fan, I wanted to see it but did not do so quickly. In the meantime, I began to notice that it either topped or at least rated very high on just about every "disturbing horror movie" list online. Eventually, I ran into someone that had purchased it and saw the movie.
I had some difficulty with the flow of the movie, possibly because it jumps around a bit more than your average horror fan is used to. It is certainly innovative and I get that the story by design had to be somewhat disjointed to be more real. If you have not seen it, the premise is that AU is a home movie shot by a serial killer. It shows even the mundane moments in his life and therefore has some significant breaks in the action. The realism is certainly there, both in the design and the production. As much as horror fans like myself tend to be uppity and flip the bird to Hollywood, we have become accustomed to movies that are all action and no story. AU flips this to some degree by having a deeper meaning without non-stop action.
The high point for me is that the Toe Tag team does a great job with gore. The blood flows freely in all of their productions and it is always well done. In fact, I don't know of anyone even with an exponentially larger budget that does it any better. If you were to find this movie laying on the sidewalk, you really would believe that it was real as Vogel has suggested.
In my opinion, the flow of AU made it difficult for me to really become invested in it. If you want to see a great movie from Vogel and Toe Tag, skip to AU Penance or the Redsin Tower. Vogel and his team are more than capable of making a very good horror film. In fact, ToeTag may be one of the newer torch carriers for the horror genre. AU just fell short of the movies that followed it.
